Dear Friends,

Every year, we tell this amazing story. It is full of mystery and magic. It contains a large cast of unlikely characters. We have a relatively poor young man, Joseph, and a remarkable young woman, Mary, who is reportedly a virgin. We also have shepherds, angels, and astronomers. The astronomers travel a great distance to bear witness.

The heart of the story is quite remarkable. It is intended to move God closer than God has ever been before. God is not stuck up in heaven. God is not only on the mountain top. God is not trapped in big, or small, temples (or churches). And to be very clear, God is not the possession of the rich and powerful. God has arrived through a peasant girl in a barn somewhere outside of Jerusalem.

What is the point of the message? For one, God shows up in the everyday circumstances of our lives. The good. The bad. The ugly. With God, nothing is off the map. Why does God show up in this manner? Well, humanity is in real need of a gift. There is an obvious problem on hand. Human beings keep trying to make sense out of things … to feel better about themselves … to try and justify their existence in terribly misplaced ways. Not to mention the corruption and violence that creeps into everything ….

So the gift arrives. It’s hard to get your head around it, and in some ways even harder to get your heart around it. Yet it’s an amazing story that threatens to give you more of what you need to have a better life or, at least, a life with more heart, more promise, more freedom. More God.

We hope you will come around this weekend. On Sunday, we celebrate our version of the Christmas Pageant, “The Inn Keeper”. Then on Christmas Eve, we will celebrate at 5:00 and 10:00 p.m. Please come, and please let the story speak to you in some unexpected way.

Warmly,

Carter